My Usual Long Overdue Blog Post :)

The past month has been AHHHMAZING! I love my job. I love being out on the water every day and seeing such beautiful creatures in their natural state. SeaWorld can suck a big one! I've gotten a few decent photos that I want to share with you guys. Before I start with the photos, I want to share this amazing experience that we are lucky enough to hear on occasion. On our boat we have a hydrophone we can drop in the water to hear the whales and orcas. The resident orca pods are usually pretty talkative and we've been able to hear them a few times. Humpbacks are a little more tricky, since they really only make vocalizations in Alaskan waters when they are bubble net feeding. And that was just what they were doing yesterday! We were on our way back from Excursion Inlet when we stopped at a group of bubble net feeding humpback whales that were a little south of Shelter Island. We dropped the hydrophone and this is what we heard!!

The sound you just heard is the call the whales make as they bubble net feed. In a nutshell, bubble net feeding is when a group of whales swim in a circle creating a 'net' of bubbles around a school of fish, then a whale (or whales) dive underneath and make that sound to sorta stun the fish, which drives them to the surface. Once they are at the surface, still trapped in that net of bubbles, the whales swim up and lunge out of the water eating all those little fish. Pretty cool huh?! And to top off all that, as we were leaving we saw four, yes FOUR different humpbacks whales breach one right after the other! Seeing a single whale breach is kinda rare around here, but FOUR?! I was speechless. Well, I take that back... I was yelling OMG, HOLY SHIT the whole time! Haha. It was the most amazing experience I've had all summer with these whales.

Now to the photos... 

Orcas in Stephens Passage

Humpback calf breaching

Silly sea lions!

Something spooked them and they jumped in the water

Humpback calf tail lobbing. Photo cred goes to Katie Harms!

This whale is nicknamed 'Spot'. Can you guess why? haha

Sea lions on a bouy. One guy is a climber.

Bubblenetters!

Humpbacks

Humpbacks

Humpback fluke

Now some non-wildlife photos. A few days ago my friend Alex and I hiked up Eaglecrest and out Pittman's Ridge a little ways. It's so crazy seeing the slopes with no snow. Most of the blacks that we ride on a daily basis are huge, jagged rock cliffs in the summer. A few trails I looked up at and thought, "how in the hell did I ride this on my snowboard?!" haha. 

Mt. Ben Stewart looking mighty fine :)

Looking off the east side.

Looking west towards Stephens Passage and Admiralty Island

Mountaintop ponds :)

Pittman's Ridge

Had to take a selfie :) haha

Looking towards Juneau.

A few snow patches were still hanging around.

One last thing, the thing that has me so stoked for this winter and has gotten my snowboarding withdrawals at an all time high is this thing...

 

Yes, Dustin got me a SPLITBOARD! Woohoo! I'm so excited! It's the Burton Spliff 148. I know that sounds short for a split, but it has 'Nug Reduction' tech which is supposed to make it ride like a 158. Now I can explore all kinds of new backcountry spots this winter. I still need to get the hardware, bindings, and skins, but I have plenty of time until the first snowflake falls. I have the best boyfriend in the world! He's so thoughtful :) 

Snow, Orcas, Sunsets, and Sitka!

Wowzers, it's been a while since my last update. I've been super busy but have had a TON of fun the past few weeks. My friend and I decided to go hike Eaglecrest Monday afternoon since our tour was cancelled due to 8 ft high seas. It was amazing... we hiked and hiked in the sunshine, finally making it to the Nest at the top. After a quick break and snack, we strapped in and had some magical turns down the mountain. The snow was perfect... soft enough to have some fun, but firm enough to grip and rip. Here are a couple pics from shreddin'...

After that adventure, well, actually during that adventure, I found out I would be going to Sitka with my crew to work a couple tours. I was excited to be going somewhere I've never been on my birthday, but kinda bummed that I couldn't spend it with Dustin. We had a 6:30 crew time Tuesday morning, which was my birthday, and wouldn't return until Wednesday night. Sitka was a 6ish hour boat ride from Juneau. We had one tour Tuesday morning in Juneau, then as soon as the passengers departed we were on our way. We were on the St. Aquilina, which is a slightly larger than our normal boat we work on, and it's a good thing because the seas were intense the first couple hours. It literally felt like a carnival ride... the seas were super rough and it was hard to walk anywhere on the boat without flying all over the place. Eventually the waters calmed down and we just enjoyed the ride. The scenery was absolutely stunning the entire trip. Southeast Alaska has got to be the most beautiful place on the planet. After what felt like forever, we finally made it to Sitka around 8:30pm.

After a few birthday drinks we all crashed out since we had another 6:30 crew time in the morning. Woke up, did two tours, seeing all sorts of awesome wildlife. Sea otters, LOTS of sea otters, humpbacks, eagles, sea lions, and even brown bear and her two cubs on a beach were among the critters we saw. After working those two tours, we got the boat ready to head back to Juneau. We didn't end up leaving Sitka till 4:30, so it was 11pm before we got back to Juneau. The trip back was so awesome! The views were just as stunning as before, and we got to see an amazing sunset as we got closer to Juneau. We came across of pod of orcas and we stopped to watch them for a while. We all went out on the bow of the boat and got some good pictures of them. I still can't believe how beautiful it all was... cruise ships in the sunset, orcas swimming all around us, the moon was so bright and beautiful. Wow. It was amazing. Simply amazing. I took a ton of pics on the trip, and you can see them all by clicking HERE, but I will post my best ones below :)

 

Tomorrow holds another adventure that will be EPIC! It involves a helicopter and my snowboard. :) I will post about that trip tomorrow night. 

Peace.